Big Mountain Game Studio
How to Add a Lake in Unreal Engine

How to Add a Lake in Unreal Engine

The default lake can look ugly and mess up your landscape. Learn how to do it the right way so lakes actually fit your landscape.

Mark Moeykens's photo
Mark Moeykens
·

2 min read

Plugins

  • Landmass

  • Water

Adding a Lake

  1. In the Place Actors pane or Add Actor button, search for "Water Body Lake".

  2. Add it to your landscape

  3. Important: Your landscape will be altered for the lake. You probably don't want this. To prevent altering the landscape, look in the Details tab > Terrain > Uncheck "Affects Landscape".

  4. Resize the lake actor to fit within your landscape.

How to change the Water's Color

The water's color comes from the default water material that is used. Probably the easiest way to change the color is to just copy that default water material and then update some of its properties.

Here's how:

  1. With "WaterBodyLake" selected (make sure it's selected in the Outliner), go to Details > Rendering section > Water Material property.

  2. You should see it set to "Water_Material_Lake". Click the Browse button (folder with magnifying glass icon) to reveal where this material is in your Content Browser.

  3. Select Water_Material_Lake and use CONTROL + D to duplicate it (or right-click and select Duplicate).

  4. Rename it to something new.

  5. Open your new water material and in the Details pane > Global Vector Parameter Values, adjust the Absorption values. (Note: You might have to enable this property first.)

    1. Tip: The default color is a gradient, so you might be better off just adjusting the red, green, and blue colors.

How to change the Underwater Color

  1. With "WaterBodyLake" selected (make sure it's selected in the Outliner), go to Details > Rendering section > Underwater Post Process Material property.

  2. Use the steps above to duplicate the default material.

  3. Open the duplicated material and you will notice it's a large material graph. What you want to look for is the node that says "Absorption". (Look for the blue "Extinction and Fog" comment and you should see it in the lower left corner.)

  4. Select Absorption and in the Details pane go to > Material Expression Vector Parameter > Default Value. It will be a gradient.

  5. Adjust the red, green, and blue values to change the underwater color.

unreal-engine